Early Sri Lankans turned the bones of the monkeys and squirrels they hunted into these projectile points.
N. Amano
Ancient humans hunted monkeys for tens of thousands of years
Humanos antigos caçavam macacos por dezenas de milhares de anos
Se você imaginar o jantar dos primeiros humanos, é provável que você os imagine sentados em um churrasco de mamutes, auroques e carne de alce gigante. Mas nas florestas tropicais do Sri Lanka, onde nossos ancestrais se aventuraram há cerca de 45 mil anos, as pessoas caçavam uma tarifa mais modesta, principalmente macacos e esquilos. Então eles transformaram os ossos desses animais em projéteis para caçar mais deles. A prática continuou por dezenas de milhares de anos, tornando este o mais longo registro conhecido de humanos caçando outros primatas, relatam os arqueólogos hoje.
Para conduzir a pesquisa, o arqueólogo Patrick Roberts, do Instituto Max Planck de Ciências da História Humana (SHH), em Jena, Alemanha, analisou ossos de animais recuperados da caverna Fa Hien, em Kalutara, durante escavações de 2009 e 2012. Materiais e artefatos incluindo carvão, restos de fauna, contas de conchas e ferramentas de ossos e pedras indicam que as pessoas ocuparam o local de cerca de 45.000 a 4000 anos atrás.
The scientists analyzed almost 14,500 animal bones and teeth from
four periods of occupation and found that gazelle-size mammals were the
most common. Monkeys (primarily macaques and purple-faced langurs, the
latter of which inhabit the tallest trees, reaching some 45 meters) and
tree squirrels made up more than 70% of the identified remains, which
also included otters, fish, reptiles, and birds. Fewer than 4% of the
bones came from deer, pigs, and bovids, such as buffalo. Many bones bore
cut marks from butchery and had been burned, signs that humans
processed them for meat.
Early humans settled in this Sri Lankan cave 45,000 years ago.
O. Wedage
The archaeologists also uncovered numerous microliths (minutely
shaped stone tools), whose purpose is as yet unknown, but were likely
used for hunting. In addition, they identified some three dozen finished
or partially completed bone projectile points. These ancient humans
were using “bones from the hunted monkeys to hunt more monkeys,” says
study co-author Noel Amano, an archaeologist at SHH.
Finally, the remains reveal that the early Sri Lankans were sustainable hunters, primarily targeting adult animals, the scientists report today in Nature Communications.
“They hunted these animals for nearly 40,000 years, without driving any
to extinction,” Roberts says. “So they must have had sophisticated
knowledge of monkey life cycles and an understanding of how to use
resources wisely.”
The findings support the idea that, as humans spread across the
world, they had to shift from hunting large, roaming animals like
mammoth and bison to smaller prey that “could withstand a higher rate of
predation,” says archaeologist Robin Dennell at the University of
Sheffield in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study.
These ancient humans probably already knew how to hunt more agile and
elusive game, says Steve Kuhn, an archaeologist at the University of
Arizona in Tucson. People had started to hunt small animals in Eurasia
about the same time they first entered Sri Lanka, he notes, and so
likely arrived with these skills.
Kuhn also cautions that the early Sri Lankans might not have been
such wise resource managers; more likely the human populations were
small and “didn’t make much of an impact.” They hunted more monkeys and
squirrels and fewer deer or pigs, he thinks, simply because the smaller
animals were likely more abundant. Like those of us who don’t have time
to shop and cook, and so grab a burger, these early people may have
simply hunted and dined on the animals that were most readily available.
doi:10.1126/science.aax0718
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